Barriers to Knowledge Sharing for Prosumers and Global Team Employees
Barriers to Knowledge Sharing for Prosumers and Global Team Employees

Summary/Abstract: Knowledge-based companies, which are the foundation of the knowledge economy, must seek innovations, ideas and knowledge both inside and outside the company. This means that they must build their business on knowledge which may be found inside and outside the company. The knowledge of the employees, which comprises the internal knowledge of the company, is embedded in the business reality but is created by a limited number of people who are often used to thinking in a specific way or one imposed by the managers. On the other hand, the knowledge of the consumers is created outside the company, and thereby forms an external source of knowledge. That knowledge is created by numerous people who are not constrained by the internal regulations or rules of the company. Modern companies must gather the knowledge of their employees and consumers, which means they must create good conditions for knowledge sharing. Consumers and employees can share knowledge seamlessly, but very often they are reluctant to do so even if suitable conditions are developed. The challenge for businesses is to find and overcome the barriers that discourage their prosumers and employees from sharing their knowledge. Analyzing only the barriers within the company would limit the research process by excluding the external flow of knowledge. The aim was to analyze the external and internal knowledge sharing barriers. Identifying these barriers would help develop common solutions to overcome these barriers. Hence the main aim of this paper is to identify the knowledge sharing barriers for prosumers and global team employees which seem to have nothing in common. The contribution of this paper is showing common barriers for knowledge sharing among both prosumers and global team employees in order to fulfil the research gap extant in the literature.

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